How moddable will the ability to send squads out into the field be?Will units have a chance to be injured/die? Will the combat be handled like world-gen combat or will there be actual background combats happening?

Question for toady, in the later stages of the artifact retrieval groups (post implementation when you might have the opportunity to polish them up/bugsquash or add new things for them to do) will we see the 'tactics' skill reserved usually for military commanders become useful? If you could trust someone to lead a siege & troops successfully, a masterful tactician might be able to co-ordinate some hand picked civilians to survive & approach a dangerous reclaimation target more easily.

> One more question related to the above. Are 'creatures' or dwarves with either natural/acquired sneaking skills (along like factors like size profile, time of day to do the deed etc usually in adventure sneaking menu detail) like civilian gremlins or veteran hunters any better than large creatures/soldiers who can just take the object by force quite bluntly, intimidating or fighting anybody that tries to stop them?

I haven't done anything with tactics yet (though it is odd that it is used in w.g. and not the post w.g. fights -- I just have an old note sitting in the code to update it). I don't think sneaking is used right now in w.g. or other non-local infiltrations, though I might have missed something.

Quote from: Daniel the Finlander

So mundane worlds won't have elves or goblins, but will they have dwarves? If not, will fortress mode even be playable, or will we be able to play as humans instead?

To confirm what somebody else said, we're definitely going to have dwarf-free worlds on both end of the spectrum. We're going to try to make fortress mode playable since it's the more complete mode of the game, but if that makes the mundane worlds too weird trying to shoehorn that in before we get to proper human village management, we might just leave it out.

Quote from: Inarius

Toady, with the artifact release, have you an idea of the future version number ?

Nope, but the guesses have all been good. I always add it up near the end, so I'm not sure right now.

Quote from: DG

Has Toady mentioned whether in the first iteration you'll be able to see the tact squads in action in some sort of remote window view or will they simply disappear off screen and then update you on what's happened when/if they later return?

Knight Otu answered this, but just to reiterate, definitely no remote view on the first pass. It's a hard/tedious problem akin to the addition of the Z coordinate to get that working in the current framework. However, it's also a problem we'd like to tackle -- magic release is the first place that might happen, with something like planar travel (which is best when you can see both sides of a portal, say). When we code that, it'll support viewing squads in the same plane at distant locations.

Quote from: Maelum

Will the myth generated only be 1 version of events like in legends mode? or will other civs and/or races have their own version on how everything was created, with maybe a chance for some of the myths to be somewhat connected, showing that some of those events happened? (like 2 dwarf civs talking about dwarves or other creatures being created by the same thing, showing a connection between those 2 civs)

Yeah, it's a difficult problem -- we've talked a bit before about partial myths and people having a different angle on the truth. Right now, the myth generator lets races center themselves in the myth, ignoring irrelevant "side" stories (like the creation of other races, if they weren't related). We are also thinking of having different fake myths for the lowest fantasy settings where none of the myths are true. But we have to be careful with it. Not sure quite how far we'll get with the first pass.

Quote from: Novel Scoops

Do you plan for conversation to use a similar system to books? I.e, "Golgar featherlumps give a scathing comeback to your criticism of dynastic bellydancing, with a hint of self-actualization. The crowd erupts in laughter"

Not planned. It has been an idea floating around, but currently I find that even repetitive dialogue pulls me out of character less than omniscient third-party narration (or whatever you'd call it).

Quote from: GoblinCookie

How many 'layers' are there going to be to whole fantasy/violence slider thing? How do things work at the low end of both, for instance in a world with no death what happens if we drop sentient creatures into lava since they there is also no magic to save them from being incinerated. Also would the lowest fantasy setting actually have a world that only has no active gods and magic but no concept of such things either?

I have no idea what it'll end up looking like. It'd be good to have broad sliders that you can then open up if you like (somewhat like face creation in some games). We intend the lowest violence settings to have Zero death and violence, so the temperature simply wouldn't affect them, if we never get to something better. The low setting would have them die (everything would be as "realistic" as the normal setting), and there'd be hunting etc., but no larger-scale warfare.

The lowest fantasy setting would probably still have religious concepts (whether gods or whatever), but they wouldn't be real. Getting rid of religion entirely is more like a culture setting (we use entities for that now, not sure what it'll end up with).

Quote from: Jimmius

The Military Arc is going to be very intresting to impliment. We're seeing the beginnings of it with sending out of Dwarf Squads and the like, but have you given any thought as to what large scale conflicts will look like?

The current combat system seems well suited for squad based combat between 10-20 opponents, but will that scale up to army vs army engagements, assuming the usual DF level of complexity for things like supply lines, baggage trains and hangers-on?

I've messed around with some side projects that take place at the mid-level maps you see during embark and in adventure mode, but we haven't made any final decisions. It's unclear how much will happen at the local level or if it'll switch between different views regularly. We'd like to handle as many other aspects as possible, though they often require other things like the items-in-armies or the economy to do correctly.

Quote from: Beag

1.Eventually would our adventurers be able to ride in boats for transportation?2.On particularly large ships could the player move around aboard and below deck while the ship is moving?3.Will the player be able to own and sail their own boat and maybe hire crew?1. Will there be gods that any race can worship and receive divine magic from?2. Will there be forces that any race can tap into with the proper training to cast magic?

1.That's the plan.2.Yep, we'd like to make them as large as possible -- the issues come with moving them around as 48x48 sections of the map are offloaded piecemeal. The issues you get with a 20x5x3 boat are about the same as those with a 4x4x2 boat, but if a boat gets up to 48 and then beyond, issues become more serious. Even with the smaller ones, there'll be weird problems with half-offloaded crews and so on.3.Yeah, that's the idea.1. The more true the myths are, the more general the gods end up being, probably, though there might still be strong racial links. I don't know about receipt of magic specifically -- the, say, dnd style of priest magic is just one way of considering it. The magic doesn't need to be received at all. In one system, you might pray for something specific, but you don't have this separation where power is received and then the god kind of forgets and you have a divine power battery (which you might forfeit through bad conduct). That said, looking at DF as a generic fantasy world generator, the battery system is valid to consider, and works well enough from a game perspective even if the myth generator might have to tie some loose ends off.2. There were systems like this in the myth generation we have in testing, so I'd expect stuff like this.

Quote from: Slozgo Luzma

This may have been asked before, but I since dwarven squads will soon be sent off the map to recover artifacts, could we possibly see caravans sent from our forts to other destinations to expand trade, and bring back exotic goods (or get ambushed) and also spread and collect news and reputation information? I ask since plans were mentioned for adv mode characters to lead caravans.

Yeah, once we get there -- we don't even have items attached to moving groups properly.

Quote

Quote from: Shonai_Dweller

I know it's not directly related to artifacts, but now that we've been playing fairly successfully with non-dwarf visitors for a while, are you going to allow non-dwarf citizens to arrive with migrants in the next release (or even the starting 7)? Or is that more complex than it seems and something that'll need to wait until Scenarios or whenever a major migrant revamp is due?

Seems a shame to have these great civs filled with goblins, gorlaks and elephant-men if they'll never come to play (Except their bards and mercenaries).

Quote from: LordBaal

Toady, does a ingame mechanic about inmigrants control is planned? Like the orders from the menu, manager or nobles, where you can select:Inmigrans:-Allow everyone.-Allow only dwarves.-Allow only dwarves from own civilization.-Allow selected races and/or civilizations. (With a sub menu where you select which races and civilizationa are allowed from a list of known ones).-Allow none.-Build a wall and make the goblins pay.

Or perhaps it could function as mandates too, where the ruling noble forbid Bullmen to enter the fortress because a bullmen or minotaurs killed his/her parents, or anything along those lines?

We're getting closer, but I think it'd still be kind of confusing with some more exposition if you suddenly got nothing but humans or jumping spider people for your first migrant wave the first time you play the game. Hopefully the embark scenario stuff will include some exposition with the information about how you're tied into your civilization, though it's hard to say now what we'll get to and what we won't now that more is riding on it.

Yeah, this sort of thing would be part of the embark scenarios/laws/etc. as we see them, and the player would have an active role in it.

Quote from: FantasticDorf

As to the above point will at any point in the future AI adventurers may be able to retire from a life of adventuring *ideally for good* (after a crippling injury, success/failure, marriage etc.) so they can just join the normal civilian life?

It seems reasonable enough.

Quote from: RedKing

Does the abstracted passage of time outside Fortress and Adventure mode take into consideration pathing structures built by the player?

For a better explanation of what I'm getting at -- I have a map where there are two main continents, both populated with a variety of civilizations. At one point, the two coastlines come within a single map tile of each other. If I build a bridge linking the two continents, will the civilizations utilize it and begin establishing trade and diplomatic contacts with each other across the bridge? Either in Fortress Mode, or if I retire the fortress and go do other stuff for a few years?

PatrikLundell answered this and went into some of the weird situations -- I can just add that there is a pathing map available now at both abstract site levels, but I don't think it tries to calculate it for the fort. But that's not an impossible problem, at least for the most general situations. So we should be able to work toward something reasonable here, especially as it starts to matter more in war-ish releases where you plant your fort at a strategic location.

Quote from: Beag

1. If a person is really devoted to a god could that god reincarnate their soul as one of their angels so they could serve them for eternity?2. Would being killed and resurrected eternally be a possible punishment for a hell like after life plane?3. Would it be possible that on some hell like planes the souls of the wicked are reformed into demons to wreck chaos and destruction?

1. I'm not sure which options will be including with the first pass of myth generation -- theoretically, we can fairly easily support whatever linkages pop critters between types, but it does have to think of them at some point for it to happen. Similarly for #3.

2. Like some sort of 7th circle lake of blood thing? We've had setups like that in other games, though who knows what goes in on the first pass.

Quote from: Max^TM

Do things like regional resurrection interactions work during world-gen? Does it need something like the IS_HIST_STRING1/2 lines? It works fine in play (to my amusement, as I forgot I had experimented with them) but I was hoping to use it to avoid the situations where "gigantic and absurdly tough megabeast was struck down by a camel in the middle of nowhere in 62" type events were permanent.

Hmmmm... doesn't look like it. I didn't support a lot of non-vanilla stuff in w.g. where there might be weird complications (or I just didn't think to support it). We'll have to see if the magic release is more comprehensive about this type of thing -- with systems being generated, the category of "vanilla" expands greatly.

Quote from: kontako

Will (Non-Player) adventurers ever abandon their quests? - Or fail without the ending result be their death?

Yeah, they'll give up after a time of fruitless searching.

Quote from: Bumber

What other things besides artifacts will we be able to send our armies after in the first release? Books? Historical items? Beasts and people (i.e., capture/assassinate)?

Nothing fighty. It just isn't that good yet. Just all of the named items, including the books. But they don't have to be yours.

Quote from: Max^TM

is the "See Great Beast" need supposed to be fulfilled by talking to any historical figure, or was that a placeholder for a point where a unit can recognize that they are looking at a semi/megabeast type of critter? Similarly is there a specific trigger for the "See Animal" and "Wander" needs? I've never been able to figure out exactly why they end up fulfilled sometimes, being around animals and roaming in the middle of nowhere doesn't do it consistently.

Neither -- just a bug! Since the animal check is similar, I wouldn't count on that working correctly either. Looks like animal should be triggered by anything without the CAN_LEARN tag, where great beast is a bizarre mess I need to fix at some point. In dwarf mode, wander should be met by hunt/gather/fish jobs. In adv mode, it is being set to the wander state, which generally happens when you get placed in a travel-mode "army", but I'm not sure if it is reliable.

Quote from: ZM5

Non-magic related - will towns and the like have restricted, guarded areas where civilians and outsiders aren't allowed to enter? Treasuries, armories, or other vital structures.

Tying into that - will the guards of a group that controls the site have their own uniforms with specific symbols? Could allow the player to sneak past guards and so on.

Eventually -- the new guard encounter is a start, but we don't understand space or property well enough yet (hopefully we will after the embark release that comes after magic).

They used to have uniforms (there's even a line for uniforms in world generation you can see near the end), but that broke down at some point. We'll get back there in the fullness of time. Maybe very full.

Quote from: Shonai_Dweller

So, sites will have these 'invisible bulletin boards' of quests for npcs to pick up, right? Will retired player fortresses also get these? It would be nice to see my old dorfs going out artifact hunting by themselves while I'm away.

I believe so, yeah. It should all work.

Quote from: Witty

Toady, how will player adventurer named items be treated in a player fortress? Would they just be treated as another unique blue named item in the artifact screen?

They are like the equipment items dwarves name after becoming attached to them.

Quote from: KillzEmAllGod

How far off are forts being able to send requests for monster hunters or groups of mercenaries to show up at the fort?Will player forts be able to offer quests to visitors?How does identities impact factions and loyalties?

I'm not quite sure. We've pretty much got everything in place -- we'd just need the dwarves you send out to be able to plant rumors someplace akin to the new invisible site message boards, or for the second one, something similar locally.

I'll have to leave it to the testers to find identity nightmares. There shouldn't be loyalty cascades, but who knoooooows? Somebody with an identity that isn't linked to their actual factions should affect only those linked to the identity, but there are so many little code checks around it might not be a clean process.

Quote from: iceball3

With the advent of the new mentioned "sending folks off the map" for artifact fetching situations, will we see more discrete explicit strategic interactions come into play in concerns with nearby sites and their holders, or is that for another release cycle? For instance, making deliberate diplomatic demands/requests to groups associated with nearby sites, as well as receiving them likewise.

We're setting up for that, but I don't anticipate that really coming into play until the embark scenario release (after the myth release, which is after this one). There will be some repercussions to you, say, swiping a skull from a human temple with a dwarf squad, and the resulting diplomacy/invasions, but it'll take a bit for it to become a cool part of the game.

Quote from: Daniel the Finlander

what makes goblins so successful in conquest post-world gen?

I'm not sure about this. Food doesn't impact post w.g. yet, aside from end-of-w.g. pops, which might be enough. There was a related issue of way more wars being started post w.g. in general that I haven't looked at yet.

Quote from: FantasticDorf

Question for Toady, if you were to tally up (for ease sake omitting value of the walls and value per discovered floorspace) the cost of a hillock or world-gen fortress based on its founding furniture, how many units of Urist would it cost to 'buy' a prebuilt settlement?

No idea!

Quote from: Eric Blank

can war animals/pets follow their owners when they're sent away? Can we beef up our recovery squad by assigning them a bunch of war dogs?

I haven't done it yet, but presumably they'll even carry their babies off the map right now. Hopefully everything will go okay!

They need to figure out that they are there, which is pretty hard right now, maybe. You'd have to blab about it, or have your companion go back to town or something, after the artifact is in place. There's a very low chance you could somehow luck into some gob squads coming after your site, but that'd require the artifact to be one that the demon/gob leader is interested in. So if you steal a gob civ artifact, bring it back to your cabin, and then start telling everybody where it is, and an agent hears it, you might arrange for it. There's not enough feedback right now to make that a satisfying process though.

Quote from: Roses

How moddable will the ability to send squads out into the field be?Will units have a chance to be injured/die? Will the combat be handled like world-gen combat or will there be actual background combats happening?

I'm not sure what you mean by moddable -- you'll be able to send out almost every dwarf if you want. Units will have a chance to be injured and die, but we can't do much more than w.g. combat. There won't be visible combats until we handle the "two viewports" issue, and having actual background combats is the same as that code-wise so we're just going to wait to do the whole thing when we get there.

I have no idea where anything is. I have no idea what anything does. This is not merely a madhouse designed by a madman, but a madhouse designed by many madmen, each with an intense hatred for the previous madman's unique flavour of madness.

They need to figure out that they are there, which is pretty hard right now, maybe. You'd have to blab about it, or have your companion go back to town or something, after the artifact is in place. There's a very low chance you could somehow luck into some gob squads coming after your site, but that'd require the artifact to be one that the demon/gob leader is interested in. So if you steal a gob civ artifact, bring it back to your cabin, and then start telling everybody where it is, and an agent hears it, you might arrange for it. There's not enough feedback right now to make that a satisfying process though.

Ooh. I know how I'm spending my first few adventurers then. Should be easy enough to ensure rumours reach the gobbo hordes with the new secret identity ability. Just go tell them about it myself.

"I'm not sure what you mean by moddable -- you'll be able to send out almost every dwarf if you want. Units will have a chance to be injured and die, but we can't do much more than w.g. combat. There won't be visible combats until we handle the "two viewports" issue, and having actual background combats is the same as that code-wise so we're just going to wait to do the whole thing when we get there."

I'm pretty sure they're asking how much we'll be able to change or determine about why people get sent out. Like, even though you haven't set it so we can send out caravans and the like, would there be a set of tokens we could plant that allows that. I already know from your other answers that, no, there is no other potential goal we can set for a group off-site, but that seems to me to be the question.

I noticed that in fortress mode you generally only get invaded by the closest single site of any civilization you are near. I postulate this may be the chief cause of the lackluster sieges. is there any plan to allow multiple sites from the same civ, or multiple same-race civs to interact with the player fort?

I noticed that in fortress mode you generally only get invaded by the closest single site of any civilization you are near. I postulate this may be the chief cause of the lackluster sieges. is there any plan to allow multiple sites from the same civ, or multiple same-race civs to interact with the player fort?

Visitors from various civs already interact with your fortress. In the next release, entities with claims on your artifacts should also (apparently) send armies to fetch them. (As far as I can tell anyway. I asked about this directly a while ago but have since been told my question was open to interpretation so Toady's positive reply didn't mean anything).

It's unlikely the regular siege draft mechanics are going to be revised any time soon. Unless it's more or less a trivial consequence of the introduction of artifact retrieval sieges, the earliest you can hope for is starting scenarios, and more probably warfare improvements (which is currently beyond the horizon).

It's unlikely the regular siege draft mechanics are going to be revised any time soon. Unless it's more or less a trivial consequence of the introduction of artifact retrieval sieges, the earliest you can hope for is starting scenarios, and more probably warfare improvements (which is currently beyond the horizon).

Being attracted by artifacts is the point of this arc. Why bother implementing diplomacy if nobody's ever going to come and claim their right to your artifacts? Except in the minuscule chance that the closest site of goblins to you has some kind of claim of course.